The Gist: An audio recording published by Politico appears to support the account of a Breitbart News reporter who alleges she was strong-armed by Donald Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, after a press conference earlier this week.

The Gist: In an exchange over whether candidates should be concerned about violence at Donald Trump rallies, Sen. Ted Cruz put the onus on "emperor" President Obama.

From The Reporter's Notebook

In an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Thursday night, Hillary Clinton answered a "thought experiement" that Maddow posed, asking if she would move to Canada if Donald Trump were to become president, TPM's Kristin Salaky wrote. Clinton denied that she'd move to Canada, but did have an interesting way of coping if Trump were to win the presidency. "Well, first of all, I do not think that will happen," Clinton said. "I have every confidence if I'm the nominee, it certainly won't happen. I would never leave our country. I would be spending lot of time yelling at the TV set, Rachel."

Agree or Disagree?

Josh Marshall: "Cruz was also looking for ways to drive home the point that there are only two candidates left who can be the nominee. In that goal he had Trump as an ally. Cruz is a consummate bullshit artist. But on his hand-raising gyre, shifting from Trump's heil-hand-raising rallies to raising his own hand at his inauguration next January, that was some quality bullshit. No question. There's a certain earnest, unironic and treacly sentimentality that is like mother's milk for traditionalist American conservatives - think Ronald Reagan, embodying an American eagle, on a flag background, on a blue sky. Cruz was deep in that groove tonight and I think he helped himself."

From a TPM Prime member: "Last night the red-baiting began. It started with a clip of Sanders trip to Cuba, when Mayor of Burlington, and saying some nice things about the Cuban regime—everyone knows they had a first rate health care system until their economy crashed after the Soviet Union collapsed--- and supporting the Sandinistas who overthrow Somoza, a horrible dictator. It ended with Clinton claiming that she, unlike Sanders, supported democracy abroad. There will no doubt be more and, if Sanders ever became the nominee the Republicans would be proclaiming Sanders a Communist 24/7. It is important that Sanders has a stronger reply than he had last night and that means not only defending himself, but attacking Clinton and the Republicans on foreign policy and democratic values. He has to start educating the voters about our actual foreign policy and why it has made us so disliked abroad. Sanders is a democratic socialist, not a Communist, He was active in YPSL as a youth. YPSL, Young People’s Socialist League, was an anti-Communist socialist organization. It abhorred both Communism and predatory capitalism. It always believed in parliamentary democracy and in free and fair elections everywhere. Bayard Rustin, Sidney Hook, Seymour Martin Lipset, were associated with it. The latter two ended up as what we would call neo-cons, but never denounced democratic socialism as an ideal. Rustin was a key figure in the civil rights movement and the organizer of the March on Washington."